Arts and Artifacts
Indemnity Program
INTERNATIONAL
Since 1975
DOMESTIC
New
Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness: American Art from the Yale University
ArtGallery that travels to the Seattle Art Museum in Washington and the
Birmingham Museum of Art in Alabama in 2009.
Photo courtesy of Yale University Art Gallery, Mabel Brady Garvan Collection.
Cover image: American Gothic, 1930, by Grant Wood was one of the paintings
indemnified through the new domestic component of the Arts and Artifacts Indemnity
Program, on view in Iowa's Des Moines Art Center's exhibition After Many Springs:
Regionalism, Modernism, and the Midwest.
Image courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago, Friends of American Art Collection. All rights
reserved by the Estate of Nan Wood Graham/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY.
"As a result of the new domestic indemnity program,
American museums will now be able to insure
temporary domestic exhibitions that might otherwise
have been prohibitively expensive. More importantly,
this new law will help ensure that all members of the
public, regardless of where they live, will continue to
have access to our nation's great works of art."
John E. Buchanan, Jr., Chief Executive Officer
Corporation of the Fine Arts Museums, San Francisco, CA
"Because of the international indemnity program,
Americans in the remotest regions of the nation—
those without regular access to cultural arts
agencies, as well as those in the most urban areas,
where such offerings are more numerous— are able
to experience, to study, and to enjoy the world's
masterpieces and, thus, to improve their lives."
William U. Eiland, Director
Georgia Museum of Art, University of Georgia, Athens, GA
"For nearly 30 years, the Phillips Collection
has benefitted from the generous support of the
indemnity program in alleviating the financial
burden of insurance and thus paving the way for
exhibitions featuring outstanding works by Renoir,
Cezanne, Braque, Bonnard, and Picasso, to name a
few, to be seen— sometimes for the first time— in
the United States "
Dorothy M. Kosinski, Director
The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC
The National Gallery of Art and the Milwaukee Art Museum partnered to present an
indemnified touring exhibit of 50 paintings by Dutch master Jan Lievens,
including Fighting Cardptayers and Death, ca. 1638.
Image courtesy of the National Gallery of Art and Milwaukee Art Museum, from a private
collection in the Netherlands.
Many exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York have been supported
through the indemnity program, including Byzantium: Faith and Power (1261-IS57) in 2004.
Photo courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The Federal Council on the
Arts and the Humanities
Both the international program and the domestic program
are administered by the National Endowment for the Arts on
behalf of the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities.
The members of the Council are:
Chairman, National Endowment for the Arts
Chairman, National Endowment for the Humanities
Secretary, Department of Education
Secretary, Smithsonian Institution*
Director, National Science Foundation
Librarian of Congress
Director, National Gallery of Art*
Chairman, Commission of Fine Arts
Archivist of the United States
Commissioner, Public Buildings Service
Secretary, Department of State
Secretary, Department of the Interior
Secretary of the Senate*
Member, House of Representatives*
Secretary, Department of Commerce
Secretary. Department of Transportation
Chairman, National Museum and Library Services Board
Director, Institute of Museum and Library Services
Secretary, Department of Housing and Urban Development
Administrator, General Services Administration
Secretary, Department of Labor
Secretary, Department of Veterans Affairs
Assistant Secretary, Department of Health and
Human Services, Administration on Aging
'Meml" u 1 onol vote on indemnity
Background
Eligibility
The Arts and Artifacts Indemnity Program was created by Congress in
1975 to minimize the costs of insuring international exhibitions. The
program is administered by the National Endowment for the Arts, on
behalf of the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities, which
is comprised of agency heads throughout the government. Since
its inception, the program has indemnified 930 exhibitions, saving
organizers nearly $250 million in insurance premiums. Some 250
museums nationwide have participated in the program, which helps
make it possible for millions of Americans to see important works of
art and artifacts from around the globe.
In December 2007, legislation was passed to create a domestic
indemnity program to provide coverage of art and artifacts from
American collections while on view in museums in the United States.
LIMITS
International Program:
• $10 billion at any one time
• $1.2 billion for any single exhibition
• Sliding scale deductible ranging from $10,000 to $500,000
Domestic Program:
• $5 billion at any one time
• $750 million for a single exhibition
• $75 million minimum for eligibility
• Sliding scale deductible ranging from $50,000 to $500,000
Spanish artist Francisco de Zurbaran's Still Life with Lemons, Oranges and a Rose, 1633,
was included in the indemnified exhibition Masterpieces of European Painting from the
Norton Simon Museum at the Frick Collection in New York.
Image courtesy of the Norton Simon Foundation.
The Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities is authorized
to make indemnity agreements with U.S. nonprofit, tax-exempt
organizations and governmental units for:
INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITIONS
• Objects from abroad while on exhibition in the United States;
• Objects from the U.S. while on exhibition outside the U.S.,
preferably when part of an exchange;
• Objects from the U.S. while on exhibition in the U.S. so long as
the exhibition includes other objects from outside the U.S. that are
integral to the exhibition as a whole.
DOMESTIC EXHIBITIONS
• Objects from the U.S. while on exhibition in the U.S.
Eligible objects include artworks, artifacts, rare documents, books,
photographs, and film. Such objects must have educational, cultural,
historical, or scientific value. International exhibitions must be
certified by the Secretary of State as being in the national interest.
A view of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art's indemnified exhibition Magritte and
Contemporary Art: The Treachery of Images, gallery space designed by California artist
John Baldessari.
Photo courtesy of Museum Associotes/LACMA.
Examples of
Indemnified Exhibitions
Cezanne and Beyond
Philadelphia Museum of Art
(Pennsylvania)
Endless Forms: Charles
Darwin, Natural Science
and the Visual Arts
Yale Center for British Art
(Connecticut)
Art in the Age of Steam:
Europe, America and
the Railway
Nelson-Atkins Museum
(Missouri)
Leonardo da Vinci:
Drawings from the
Biblioteca Reale, Turin
Birmingham Museum of Art
(Alabama)
Hidden Treasures from
the National Museum of
Afghanistan, Kabul
National Gallery of Art
(Washington, DC)
Van Gogh and the
Colors of the Night
Museum of Modern Art
(New York)
Matisse: Painter as Sculptor
Dallas Museum of Art
(Texas)
Magritte and Contemporary
Art: The Treachery of
Images
Los Angeles County
Museum of Art
(California)
Louvre Atlanta
High Museum of Art
(Georgia)
The Aztec World
Field Museum of
Natural History
(Illinois)
El Greco to Velazquez:
Art During the Reign of
Philip III
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
(Massachusetts)
Life in the Pacific in
the 1700s
Honolulu Academy of Arts
(Hawaii)
I
1
Marcel Duchamp's Bicycle Wheel, 1913/1964, from the indemnified exhibition
Surrealism and Beyond in the Israel Museum, Jerusalem at the Cincinnati Art
Museum in 2009.
Photo courtesy of the Vera and Arturo Schwarz Collection ofDada and Surrealist Art from the
Collection of the Israel Museum, Jerusalem.
Organizations interested in applying may
obtain information bv contacting:
Alice M. Whelihan Laura Cunningham
Indemnity Administrator Assistant Indemnity Administrator
Telephone: 202-682-5574 Telephone: 202-682-5035
Fax: 202-682-5603 Fax: 202-682-5721
E-mail: whelihaa@arts.gov E-mail: cunninghaml@arts.gov
National Endowment for the Arts
1100 Pennsylvania Avenue. NW
Washington, DC 20506-0001
NATIONAL
ENDOWMENT
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